Once you meet her
by Digger McFoogle
Summary: Aeris… the beauteous, pious flower girl so loved by all who knew her. One character in particular reflects on her life and death…Songfic to Nobuo Uematsu’s Once you meet her. PLEASE REVIEW!


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Once you meet her

Synopsis: Aeris… the beauteous, pious flower girl so loved by all who knew her. One character in particular reflects on her life and death…Songfic to Nobuo Uematsu's Once you meet her. PLEASE REVIEW!

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And no one knows it--

Where she came from, where she's going.

And once you meet her,

You will find that something inside is changing.

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Beauty. Beauty in its purest form was what she symbolised to me. A perfect being, sculptured by the Planet to be. She captured hearts. She captured mine.

Strange isn't it? We seem incompatible. There are so many things that should have come between us… but you must understand, Aeris Gainsborough was the most perfect being I had ever met. She was an angel, our very own angel, the true saviour of the world no matter what we say. The last ancient. The only martyr.

A flower blooming in the church, that was her. Midgar life choked me… it stole my innocence. Niebelheim was such a small town, and to come from there to the city of the damned took more than I expected from me. Yet she… she who seemed to come from the air was un-touched, flawless in her perfection. Before her, our crusade as AVALANCHE seemed to have no true direction, no purpose. But she showed us the way we could truly save the planet. She was Hope.

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She's like a rainbow--

When she comes up, all are lit up.

And when she whispers,

You will hear this: "Don't chase after rainbows."

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She was untouchable. We learned that the hard way. I believe in some way she wished she could let go, be herself, love us as we loved her. She knew, though. Even though she was so loved by so many she could never afford to give emotion back, despite her longing and love. I think of Tseng… dead from love, it seemed. I remember her tears when he laughed at her, stating. "letting Aeris go was the beginning of my bad luck." She tried to hide it, but I knew how she felt. He was the only person left that she had given her affection freely to, yet fate had held them apart, and she had lost him as testament to her celestial status. Untouchable perfection.

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High on a hill, there's a green meadow.

All around, it's breezin',

She's smilin',

She'll let them sing angel songs.

***

She haunted our dreams. Haunted them and yet blessed them in the same breath. In the Sleeping forest she called to us, and her airy voice called. We never talked about them at the time, but before… _it _happened, she visited us. A final goodbye if you will… I wish I'd known. I wish I could have stopped it. But… retrospect is cruel isn't it? Every second in my fragile mind I see her in that same place, singing sweetly a little tune, a tune I swore I heard as she fell. Damn him. Damn Sephiroth…

***

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She's like a fairy

When she's trembling, when she's dancing.

Just see her rambling--

How it's nice to follow her to the end.

***

Strange, isn't it? How things work out, I mean. When I met her in Midgar I never imagined we would come so far. To be honest, I didn't think she would be able to make it. She seemed… weak, breakable, but she showed me to be wrong. She kept us going in the face of adversity. She knew what was going to happen, yet it did not matter to her in the slightest. We followed her lead blindly… we did not know, we couldn't have known…

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You want some meanings of the life,

And go to see her.

Don't ask her too much--

Oh yes, she'll be out of your sight

Right over.

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I wonder if she knew all of the secrets that we will still seek… now, in this cacophony of thought and injustice I wonder secretly, how much did she know? As she fell forwards on the blade she was smiling softly to herself, to me, to the others… maybe there is more to this whole sordid business than martyrdom. Indeed, seeing her fall from prayer made me choke on tears… I could not quite stand the thought of her prayer being in vain. Could it really be that evil was destroying us so easily? No, there is more to it than that.

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High on a hill, there's a green meadow.

All around, it's breezin',

She's smilin',

She'll let them sing angel songs.

***

You told me in a dream to look for you through bad times… to look after others and let you deal with Sephiroth. I did not understand; I wanted to go with you, flower-girl. But I didn't. I knew, somehow deep inside that I had to stay… was that wrong? I cannot even begin to know.

You prayed. You called for every last soul on the Planet for salvation. All your being you poured into one moment, a cry, a plea for salvation. It makes me weep to think of your sweet smile as the blade plunged into your soul, as the angel of death came and took your last breath. A tragic loss for the righteous… I am not afraid to say I lost hope then.

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Everyone is sad and blue when she is far away.

Don't you know it's time to pray she'll be coming soon?

And you think you hear her voice ringing from above.

***

I look at her now. It is my turn. I walk to her crumpled lifeless body and touch her face gently… it is all I can do. I keep thinking she will stir, her mako-green eyes will light and look into my brown, and her smile will once more light up our lives. But there she stays, motionless and empty. This is not Aeris. This is a shell of what was the Last Cetra.

The memory of her smile is choking me now. As my hand lingers round her cupid mouth I can feel the tears well in the corners of my eyes. I resist tears, not for my sake, but for the others… but it is too late. A strangled sound comes from my throat as I turn, my gaze momentarily settling on Cloud.

You loved her so much, Cloud. I envied it, the love you held for someone who could never love you fully back. Yet I understood… I fell under her spell too. We all did. She was perfection, Cloud… I only wish I could live up to her legacy… you look at me coldly. I am not her.

I turn and run, tears falling for myself, for Cloud, and for Aeris… we are all damned by secrets, are we not? But Aeris… there is one thing that consoles me. I know I shall see you again, when the Apocalypse comes, I shall see you in the promised land, and in death alone shall we be truly happy. Maybe now I do understand your smile.

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*** 

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And no one knows it--

Where she came from, where she's going.

And once you meet her,

Maybe you'll stay forever young. 


End file.
